Drivin' and Cryin'.

And we're off! Its Wednesday, October 19, 2011, demolition man be demolishing, and this is The Side. Been working in the same building trying to tear it down to the point where we cam fix it back up. Been over a week now. I'm starting to think we should have just used dynamite and started over.

FANDOM!!

After the terrible accident at the race this past weekend that claimed the life of a drive, we got to talking about being fans. Now, the fella who unfortunately passed away is not someone I had ever heard of before this happened. I don't follow racing. This guy was a former champion, and according to those who knew him and competed against him, was a pretty stand up guy. Lot of people liked him, and for those who did, I'm sorry for your loss.

In talking about him yesterday another racing death got brought up. That of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Now, speaking as I guy from Virginia, who grew up in Blackwater, among more than his fair share of country-type folk, I don't give a damn about that guy. He had a reputation of racing like jerk and playing hardball out on the track and that caught up with him. He wasn't a big champion, and there are plenty of drivers who won a lot more races than him. And yet, he's this major figure in the sport and near hillbilly sainthood. The story was the lead story on the front page of the local newspaper for three days, and one idiot on the radio claimed his spirit made the flowers in her garden bloom.

Now, in discussing Earnhardt I got to hear some real doozies of fandom. One person told my friend, "Yeah, I stopped watching NASCAR after my driver died." which he was referring to Earnhardt. This got the response, "Yeah, I stopped watching basketball after Magic Johnson retired." And I also heard about some joker who said he saw Earnhardt come around a corner and new that the guy was something special. Bullshit. he came around the corner of that track just like every other driver who came around the corner of that track. It wasn't like Michael Jordan jumping across the court for a dunk, or Randy Couture putting brakes on Vitor Belfort. Those were stand out performances. The guy who made the comment was just trying to pull the old 'I liked him before anyone else' card.

There are people who are fans of a sport, and there are those who are fans of people in a sport. It is kind of weird when you have someone who is a fan of an athlete but doesn't care about the sport at all. Its kinda like saying "I stopped reading comics after jack Kirby died". I do understand being sad when your favorite guy out there retires or unfortunately gets hurt. I just don't get giving up on something entirely just because one person is no longer there. Did that one person make the sport so much more entertaining that its just not the same without them there? And in the case I'm mainly talking about, and this is going to sound mean, but I'm a freaking redneck so I can say it, did that one guy drive fast and turn left in such a dramatic fashion that the others paled in comparison and the sport isn't the same without him?

I do respect those drivers. I certainly couldn't do what they do. Still, when you here some of those comments, its really easy to understand why people make fun of NASCAR fans. Its not all the fans of course, but like anything else its easy to go from fandom to fandumb.

MUSIC!!

Yep. Had to do it. Primus sucks.



That's it for me. Time to go demolish some more. See y'all Friday.

The audience of one

I think everyone one creates and makes their work public asks themselves at some point, "Is anyone even seeing this?" This point comes early in careers of creators, before the numbers come in as to how much you've sold, or how many hits there are on your website or you start seeing your name mentioned here and there. This can be scary for some people. Some people feel the need for validation of their efforts. Validation is nice and comforting. No one wants to feel like they've been wasting their time and effort. However, they're missing out on something.

There's an old expression: "Dance like nobody is watching you." They never intended that saying to apply only to dancing. There's a liberating feeling to being your own audience and not caring about your sales or hit count. You start getting experimental. You start throwing new ideas and techniques around to see what works and what doesn't.

For me, it was college. NIGHT LIFE got it's humble beginnings in the James Madison University newspaper. I learned a lot there. I learned about meeting my deadlines. I learned about pacing my story. I learned how to deal with different editors. And I learned how to dance like no one was watching.

For those who aren't familiar with good ol JMU at the time there were about 10,000 students. The JMU newspaper, The Breeze, was put out on Mondays and Thursdays and was free. I didn't find out until later that the paper was also available throughout the city of Harrisonburg were JMU was nestled in. So, my work was readily available to thousands of people, and I maintained that only 12 of them actually read the damned thing.

I had to. I have one very prominent weakness: I am completely unable to comprehend that I have fans somewhere. I once had a professor ask me to stay after class for a moment if I had the time. I figured I was in deep shit because I was struggling with the class. No, he wanted to chat about the comic. When I should have felt pride, I kind of felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me. I learned to deal with it, especially after people who came to me as fans became friends. They started to get more vocal. Professors were thinking it was cool that I was in their classes. Other students would talk to me about certain characters.

The 12 fan theory got utterly destroyed at a party when I discovered that nearly everyone there was a fan. Thank God it was senior year. I may have developed an ego or something.

Fast forward to now. I'm putting out more content than ever before. However, I'm back to my old 12 fan theory. 12 is a good number. It's small enough that I don't feel overwhelmed, but it's large enough to motivate me. I'd hate to let down my fans, all 12 of you. I've got two followers of this blog so for all I know Pinds and Kristie (bless the pair of ya!) are the only people who will ever read this.

And I'm cool with that.

I'm going to keep on dancing.